Fire Walk With Me
by Leslie4
Summary: Willow wakes from a dream only to find a nightmare. BtVSSupernatural xover.


Warnings: Character Death

A crease began to form on Willow's brow as she tossed her head in her sleep, there was an odd feeling of foreboding silently stalking the edges of her dream. It was just out of the grasp of her dreaming mind, until the feel of liquid traveled along the crease. Her eyes twitched in dream state, as a drop of liquid appeared on her forehead once more. Before the third drop could descend, Willow's eyes opened and her brain refused to recognize the message that her eyes were sending it.

Kennedy stared down at her from the ceiling. Her body contorted into an unnatural pose as though a puppet master had just cut the strings to his marionette. Before Willow could form a coherent thought, fire burst forth and consumed Kennedy.

"NO!" An animalistic growl erupted from the petite redhead's throat as she scrambled from the bed in a desperate attempt to save her lover. Magical power rose around Willow, crackling the air surrounding her, but it was futile. No spell and no magical power could save Kennedy from an evil worse than the First. Pure evil had been stalking them and they hadn't been able to outrun it. Survival instinct warred with her desire to stay with Kennedy. She'd survived Tara and she didn't want to survive another death, she was tired of fighting evil.

_It's not your time, baby. She's beyond your help and at peace with me. You still have so much more to do._

"Tara?" Willow wondered if her mind had finally snapped until she felt a gentle caress and knew that both Kennedy and Tara were beside her. She didn't want to have more to do, she wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. Her desire to make amends for the destruction she'd wrought when Tara died, kept her fighting the evil. That, and the intense need for Tara to be proud of her even years after her death had her going to the next town and the next evil. The smoke began to fill the room and with a heavy heart Willow left her lover's macabre burning body, before it was too late to leave at all.

"Dean!" Sam yelled while his eyes remained glued to the laptop monitor, his ears barely registering his brother's rapid footsteps across the room.

"What? What has your panties in a twist?" Dean leaned over Sam's shoulder reading the entries on the paranormal forum. He thought his brother was insane for stubbornly continuing to check the forum of idiots for any clue to the evil that killed their mother and Jess. "Don't tell me. Elvis appeared to Lois vonYokel and she's trolling the forum for followers to the cult of the King."

"Dumb ass. No read this one." Sam pointed to a query on the forum dated two weeks earlier by redwitch. "She's asking about any instances of spontaneous combustion."

Dean rolled his eyes, "So? That's an urban legend and there are at least five queries a month on that subject."

"Get your head out of your ass and read it." A muscle began to tick in Sam's jaw as he tried to hold in his temper. He knew how his brother felt about the forums, but he wanted to follow any clue, anything that would lead to the thing that killed Jess. Sam had nearly given up, acknowledging his brother was right. He probably wouldn't find the answers in the forum, that was, until he found the question by redwitch.

_Spontaneous Combustion_

_I'm writing a thesis paper on the urban legends of spontaneous combustion. I believe they exist and I'd like to prove it to my professor, even though my paper features a minority specialization. If you have any stories or documented cases of bodies catching fire and defying gravity please contact redwitch at gmail dot com_.

Dean read the query twice before he looked over at his brother. It chapped his ass that he'd have to eat his words. It seemed that Sam i _had_ /i found a clue from the forum of idiots. "Let's see what this redwitch has to say." It was the closest that he'd come to saying that Sam had done well.

He still wasn't convinced that redwitch knew anything, but it was the first query that had any correlation to Jess and their mom. Even, their father's journal hadn't mentioned another case besides their mother, in the 22 years since it happened. After Jess, Dean was sure the evil was after their family, but with this new clue, he wasn't sure. Perhaps the story was larger than even his father thought.

Googling redwitch brought up 59 hits and it seemed she was as determined to find stories on the paranormal as they were. All of her inquiries had an underlying core of evil despite the wide variety of topics she asked about. With his interest peaked, Dean smiled over at Sam, "We're going on a witch hunt."

Years of training with Buffy and later the called Slayers had honed Willow's fighting skills. So when a strange voice shouted, "Down!" out of the darkness with authority, her instincts took over and she dropped without a second thought. The vampire that she had been fighting, exploded in a cloud of dust as his head was detached from his body with a circular weapon.

Dusting herself off, Willow quickly rose to her feet and reached for the weapon now lodged in a tree. "A regular Xena." Holding the weapon gently in the center, she turned to the two male forms emerging from the shadows.

"I'd prefer, a regular Blade, though if you want to dress up as Xena I won't complain." Dean regarded the petite woman in front of him and took note of the expert way she held his weapon despite never seeing it before.

Willow returned the weapon, looking at the two men in curiosity. "Thanks, but I'll pass. Unless you want to dress up as Blade and join me." Since leaving Sunnydale, she'd learned that there were more people aware of the existence of paranormal than she had ever believed. It no longer surprised her when complete strangers knew how to kill a demon. "And thanks for killing the vampire."

"They're annoying, but surprisingly easy to kill. No ritual involved, and no burning of bones. Just a shotgun blast to the head or a quick flick of the wrist." Dean looked over his shoulder at his brother, "this is Sammy, and I'm Dean."

Only years of practice had stopped Sam from dropping his jaw when his brother had introduced them with their true names rather than an alias. He held out his hand and nodded in greeting. Redwitch hadn't been at all what he was expecting. When Dean had finally traced her IP address to her home computer and they'd first seen her two days ago, Sam had thought she was really an academic working on a thesis. Every time they saw her, she had a pile of books with her. Tonight, however, her skills at fighting the vampire belied the academic theory. "It's Sam."

Willow's lips twitched, reminded of the many times Dawnie would correct her or Buffy when they introduced her to others. "I'm Willow. Rituals and burning bones? Is that what you do? Stop vengeful spirits?"

"A few. We're hunters." Dean watched her carefully for her reaction to his words.

The muscles in Willow's body tightened, as thoughts of the Initiative and those that would hunt Oz flashed in her mind. She regarded the two in front of her warily. "Hunters? What exactly do you hunt?"

Sam spoke before his brother could screw this up, "an evil that kills through fire and evisceration."

Without thought, Willow's magic began to swirl around her as the emotions of Kennedy's death came hurtling back. Harnessing the power buffeting her body with difficulty, Willow took deep breaths trying to calm her feelings. Her eyes locked on the brothers, "tell me everything."

"You first." Dean ignored his brother's glare. "How do you know about an evil that kills through fire and evisceration?"

She stared at Dean for a moment before complying, "Kennedy, my girlfriend, died three weeks ago." Willow went on to explain waking up after feeling a drop of liquid on her forehead and Kennedy's body attached to the ceiling. She didn't tell of her thoughts that the evil she was searching for was much more than the First Evil. "Your turn. What made you begin searching?"

Sam glanced at his brother, wondering if he'd reveal what happened to their mother, but before he could tell what happened with Jess, Dean began to talk.

"I was four when our mother was killed that way. Our father began a hunt that we've continued and in the twenty two years since then, only one other has been discovered." Dean glanced over at his brother and waited for a subtle sign for him to continue.

"Until Jess, my girlfriend." Sam continued, telling Willow of waking up after feeling a drop of liquid on his forehead and Jess' body attached to the ceiling. "I swore that I was going to find what killed Jess."

Willow nodded, knowing first hand the need for revenge. She made a quick decision and one that she hoped she didn't come to regret. "Come with me. I have something that you might want to see."

The Winchesters followed Willow to her small apartment that she'd rented since Kennedy's death. "I've been doing research and though I haven't come up with anything that might connect the deaths of your mother and your girlfriend with Kennedy, we do have one thing in common. We've been fighting things that go bump in the night for years."

Willow tossed Dean the tome that she had been researching from, "This lists five occurrences that are close to what we're fighting. The last recorded one happened in 1761 and of course believed to be the work of the devil taking his witch back into the fold. The village thought it was fitting punishment for the woman." Her gaze flicked between Dean and Sam, "the deaths had a cycle of 20-25 years and all victims had some tie to the paranormal."

She chose her words carefully, watching for their reactions, "Did Jess or your mother have any ties to the paranormal? Psychic? Practice spells?" Willow's senses went on alert when Sam stiffened but Dean narrowed his eyes.

"No, Sammy."

Sam ignored Dean, his eyes never leaving Willow's. "The only psychic connection they have is through me."

Willow nodded, "Kennedy's connection is through me." She wouldn't tell them of her Slayer ability. That was a story they didn't need to know for their hunts. "I'm a witch." She turned toward Dean at his snort of disbelief and cocked her head to the side. "You fight evil, you decapitate vampires, yet you don't believe in witches?"

"Nothing personal, but I think you're a woman that lost someone close and are grasping for something to explain it."

The red head smiled slightly, wondering what Dean would have thought if she told him of almost destroying the world with her magic. "There is probably some of that, but haven't you been doing the same thing since your mother died?" Willow raised her hand, letting the magic within her that she normally kept trapped in a cage, flow through her veins. A flick of her hand and Dean was two feet off of the ground, "Still don't believe in witches?"

A smirk danced around Sam's lips as he watched Dean struggle futilely, "Is that something that you can show me how to do?"

"Sorry." Willow grinned at the younger Winchester before releasing Dean. Her eyes turned serious before continuing. "I don't know if the 1700s deaths have anything to do with your loss, but it's a place to start." She'd left a voice mail with Giles to research the deaths and to see if there were any connections to Kennedy. Willow made a mental note to call the ex-Watcher and give him their mother and Jess' names. If he could find a pattern, maybe she would be able to find where it'll appear next.

"So you're saying that this evil thing feeds on psychics? Why Sammy or you? Why not all psychics? Why every two hundred years?" Dean considered the small woman in front of him. Until Willow, he had thought that the evil was after Sammy. As bad as he felt for Willow losing her lover, it took the weight off of his shoulders. "There has to be something that you and Sammy share in common."

"Well as he's not a lesbian or a witch, I don't see what it could be." Willow turned to Sam, her arms crossing over her chest. "I don't know why we were singled out, and to be honest I don't really care, unless it brings me a little closer to Kennedy's killer." She shook her head wearily, before tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Look, I'm sorry. You're still searching after twenty-two years, and I know I'm not going to find a solution after three weeks. You're right, every clue, no matter how small may lead to an answer."

She grabbed a piece of paper and ripped it in half before handing Sam a scrap. "Give me your email and if I find anything, I'll email you." Willow wrote her own email down and exchanged it for his. "Ghosthunter huh?"

"Redwitch, huh?" Sam countered with a small smile.

"Cut the Hallmark moment." Dean rolled his eyes and clapped his brother on the back of the shoulder. "If we find anything we'll email you." He winked at Willow, "You sure you won't consider dressing like Xena?"

Willow laughed as she walked them to the door, her gaze traveling over Dean's form, "I'm sure. Leather chafes." Her laughter floated after the brothers.


End file.
